After noting that Harrison feels the NFL is unfairly singling him out, Tirico added that even his soft-spoken teammate, Troy Polamalu, expressed support for Harrison.

Well, gee, Mike, thanks for the context. What else was Polamalu, a teammate and hard-hitting safety (Hey, that’s both a modern redundancy and an oxymoron!) going to say?

But then Jon Gruden took over with an excited defense of Harrison, concluding that “he is not a dirty player!”

Really? So what do we make of those season-to-date clips on ESPN showing Harrison delivering concussion bombs, excessively and needlessly brutal shots to the heads of defenseless receivers and quarterbacks, with no attempt to tackle? Should we just ignore those?

Harrison, by the most forgiving standards, is a dirty player.

Harrison has provided lots of proof. You may recall two Super Bowls ago: With 3:26 left and the Steelers up, 20-14, Harrison knocked down the Cardinals’ Aaron Francisco, punched him, then shoved him a few times. Who care if it was late in the Super Bowl, he was flagged and was lucky to escape ejection.

Off the field, he has issues, too, from being sentenced to anger management classes following an arrest for domestic assault, to his pit bull’s attack on his son.

Yet, Monday night we had to hear that the NFL is picking on Harrison. What about Harrison’s victims? Who cares?

Two weeks ago, Harrison threatened to quit because the NFL is picking on him. In the midst of a $51 million deal, he decided against that. Gee, tough call. But on ESPN, he’s poor, poor James Harrison. On ESPN, it’s more insults to those in the audience who choose to go with what they see rather than what they’re told.

Clueless Joe hung ’round for much too long

Espn this week came to the sudden realization that it was time for its lead baseball analyst, one of the network’s most important hires, to go after 21 years.

It would be disingenuous at this point to express sympathy for Joe Morgan, but it should be pointed out that he had an incredible TV run — 25 years with three networks — for a man who consistently fabricated baseball history, personal history, game analysis and eyewitness accounts.

If reporting fiction as fact were a firing offense at ESPN, Morgan would not have lasted one season, let alone 21. But in time, Morgan wasn’t Morgan’s fault, he was ESPN’s. Maybe the bosses didn’t know enough about baseball to know Morgan was full of it, or maybe they just didn’t care.

Morgan’s long-form, all-game nonsense wasn’t as insulting to knowledgeable baseball fans as was ESPN’s persistence in bringing him back year after year. And Morgan was known to ESPN staffers to be an uncooperative pain in the butt.

If there was a moment when Morgan’s fictionalized history collided with his fabricated analysis, it was the Sunday night in 2007 when the Mets played the Cubs at Wrigley Field. Mets second baseman Luis Castillo had trouble with a wind-blown pop up, but made the catch.

Morgan knowingly explained that Castillo’s difficulties in making that catch were the result of being unaccustomed to playing in windy Wrigley because Castillo had spent his career in the AL with Minnesota.

But Castillo had joined the Mets after only one full season with the Twins. His previous 10 had been with the NL Marlins. The forever infamous Steve Bartman/Moises Alou foul ball in the 2003 Marlins-Cubs NLCS was on a fly hit by . . . Luis Castillo.

ESPN’s decision on Monday to let Morgan go closes another colossally absurd, much-too-long chapter in the annals of the nation’s “Sports Leader.”

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ESPN’s Lou Holtz on ESPN Radio yesterday, matter-of-factly said he was “well aware of the [Cam Newton academic fraud and payola ] situation because I’m very close to [Florida coach] Urban Meyer and I go there every year to talk to the team.”

Oh, okay. How nice. Holtz might be paid to work for ESPN, but that doesn’t mean heworks for ESPN. As Maynard G. Krebs said (the G. stood for Walter), “What an age we live in!”

No passing grade for QB ratings

One of the more hopeful developments this NFL season is that TV is backing off of quarterback ratings, perhaps after examining how they rarely have much to do with the actual games.

To that end, during Sid Rosenberg‘s guest slot on WFAN on Saturday, he and a caller agreed that John Elway was the greatest QB in NFL history and Johnny Unitas was No. 2. It’s hard to argue; both are up there. Where is Elway on the career QB rating list? He’s 52nd. Unitas? He’s 63rd. Neither Hall of Famer is rated as high as Ken O’Brien, Marc Bulger and Trent Green.W

Question: How many times over the last eight or so years have you heard TV’s NFL experts declare that Randy Moss is a changed man, all grown up?

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Dave Niehaus, who died Wednesday at 75, was the voice of the Mariners since 1977 — since Day 1. His folksy, they-don’t-make-‘em-like-that-anymore style may have made him the most beloved man in the Pacific Northwest. . . . Former St. John’s coach Norm Roberts has been added to SNY as a Big East studio and game analyst. While we’re at it, if the Big East expands any further west, there will be a Big East Pacific Division.

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I was far from clear here on Monday in writing that Zenyatta‘s stretch run for second in the Breeders’ Cup was the most memorable second-place finish since Roger Bannister blew past John Landy and Landy turned his head the wrong way looking for Bannister, to break the four-minute mile in Vancouver in 1954. All true. But Bannister broke 4:00 for the first time weeks earlier in England — and Landy also went under 4:00 before that race.

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Baseball In The Age of Bud: Now that integrity, top to bottom, means nothing in sports, why shouldn’t George Steinbrenner be in the Hall of Fame?